"Trick or Treat" by Nancy Kilpatrick

First appeared in Paula Guran's Halloween: Magic, Mystery, and the Macabre.

Malina has inherited her mother's and grandmother's legacy of being a witch.  Her mother once left a razor blade in a child's candied apple. Luckily for Malina and her family, the mother wasn't caught, but Malina had to suffer the other children's suspicions.

Malina tries sever the legacy with the help of Guin, a friend. She buys pumpkins, which are supposed to ward off demons, going against what her mother would have done (welcome them into her house). When some of the neighborhood thirteen children bash in her car windows, Guin tries to soothe her into the best reaction towards the kids: offer candy and tell them you're disappointed. But it doesn't go according to the ideal plan

The ending is fascinating. How do we interpret the character's whole-hearted regression? With joy at revenge? or with melancholy? The latter seems the more nuanced response, but the former might seem more appropriate for those with different dispositions.

"Unternehmen Werwolf" by Carrie Vaughn

Fritz is a Nazi spy and a werewolf--one of several working for the Reich.  His job is to assassinate traitors, collaborators.  However, his mark has supernatural abilities of her own, and she will focus his energies on what he truly wants.

Not a horror story, but a story that takes the horror out of monsters--admirable.

"The Mummy's Heart" by Norman Partridge

This starts like your average horror story:  Two young brothers and a friend, trick-or-treating in 1963, run into Charlie Steiner, a twenty-three-year-old dressed like a mummy--better than your average costume, made worse by his own modifications:  lopping off a few of his own fingers and tongue.  He's got a young girl tied up and throw's her into the lake.

The cops get the guy, but the narrator's brother is dead and the girl has disappeared.  If the tale had ended here, the story would have been competent but forgettable.

But it keeps going.  We wonder if our narrator has lost his wits.  Was he imagining this all?

Our narrator goes to Vietnam, returns to be a cop in town.  But then a similar scenario plays out:  A biker gang is herding a young woman into the lake using flares. They have a shootout, and this time the narrator saves the girl.  Or does he?

I like a good, brief philosophical opening, but this one goes on too long.  Maybe skip it and come back to it after reading the tale through.  There are some open-ended, impossible-to-resolve aspects that some readers may enjoy speculating about:  Is there something in the lake?

Definitely check this one out.  This made me look for more of Partridge's work.  Most recently he's appeared in Nightmare magazine: "Bloody Mary".

Reread: "Thirteen" by Stephen Graham Jones

A mark of a good story is that you can reread them (first reading).  I enjoyed the reread of Jones' tale--the ending more potent this time.

My favorite line came near the beginning:

"The just hung a thick curtain in the middle so they could show two movies....  My dream's always been for them to roll that curtain up one night, show us the big picture."

A fascinating metaphor--that maybe we're always missing the big picture when we watch one movie.  It ties in with genre as well, flattening literary works out to highlight just a genre's one aspect.  Interesting though, is that the narrator's construction of the metaphor (not the author's) falls apart since those leaving have only taken in the one show.

"Thirteen" by Stephen Graham Jones

When you hold you breath for 120 seconds at the Big Chief movie theater, you can breathe things into existence.  Nice nostalgic mood and movement if somewhat meandering.

Links: Stories, Halloween, ants

Barbarians (short story prequel to The Runelords) by David Farland

Three audio horror short shorts at Pseudopod (by Joe R. Lansdale, Keith McCleary, and Jaki Idler)

Halloween: Magic, Mystery and the Macabre edited by Paula Guran

31 Days of Halloween (free fiction)

Choose Your Own Philosophy

Ants! (Hormigas on the loose)

• Making aluminum casts of anthills (to see their cities)
• Time-lapse ant tunnels
• Giant anthill in concrete
• Life Inside The Colony